CaliforniaTea Party founder suing IRS over scandal

As the IRS-Tea Party scandal continues to balloon, Grass Valley attorney — and ol’ school Tea Party leader — Mark Meckler is filing a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Nor Cal Patriots — and potentially other organizations whose tax status applications were processed IRS. Check out the complaint here.

Meckler, who was EARLY on the Tea Party bandwagon as co-founder and former National Coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, filed the suit in federal court in Ohio as the co-founder of Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG). He wants “damages against the IRS for illegal and harassing behavior in the handling and processing of their applications for non-profit status.”

As the suit states:

“… under pain of denial of tax-exempt status, the IRS and its agents
singled out groups like NorCal Tea Party Patriots for intensive and intrusive scrutiny, probing
their members’ associates, speech, activities, and beliefs. NorCal and its members suffered years
of delay and expense while awaiting the exemption and spending valuable time and money
answering the IRS’s questions. The result was a muffling and muzzling of free expression.
Hundreds of other citizen groups who met the IRS’ criteria—at first, groups with “tea party”-
sounding words in their names, but later, groups whose members shared purposes and beliefs
similar to NorCal’s—suffered the same fate.”

We’ve known Meckler for years. You may remember this photo of him and MoveOn.org co-founder Joan Blades from a story I wrote in January about people from different parts of the political spectrum trying to bridge partisanship to find solutions.

Says Meckler, via his press release:

As Thomas Jefferson said, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” We intend to put a healthy fear of the the people back into those who serve in our government. The American people will no longer play defense against the ever-expanding intrusions of the federal government on their liberties. Today, we go on offense.